


Don't pin it all on me

by jasmiinitee



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: (again) oops how does he get into these situations, Box is a dick but he's a dick with layers, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hallucinogens, Morse Whump, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Prompt Fill, click and find out, it's not shippy and not friendsy but it's exploring some character dynamics, knife wounds and very poor first aid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 20:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20141533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasmiinitee/pseuds/jasmiinitee
Summary: '...and how the fuck do you know where I live,' was the first thing Ronnie managed to spit out, despite it being the last thing anyone probably should have said in those circumstances.'Just let me in, you bastard,' Morse slurred against the wood of his door frame, eyes wild and dark and staring ahead kind of blindly.(Kind of set during Degüello but not really.)





	Don't pin it all on me

**Author's Note:**

> From a tumblr whump prompt:
> 
> _The hero shows up at the villain’s doorstep one night. They’re shivering, bleeding, scared. There’s also a slightly dazed look in their eyes – they were drugged. They look like they were assaulted. Looking up at the villain, swaying slightly as they’re close to passing out, they mumble “…didn’t know where else to go…” then collapse into the villain’s arms._

It had been half an hour since he'd woken up, feeling confused and tense as he stared out of the window. The streets were pitch-black still, and no one was about at such an early hour. But he was left chilled, and it wasn't the temperature. It was like something was coming his way, something that got him to change into his proper clothes.

He'd decided it was time for a smoke, and just that, but it hadn't got him very far from the creeping cloud overhead. He could have gone for a walk and cleared his head a bit. As long as nothing else really happened.

Maybe there was something true to whatever all the stoned flower children sang about while creating loads of useless work for them. Maybe there was a thing called karma, or intuition, or whatever. Most likely it was just happenstance. That's what he told himself, at least, but in a weird way Ronnie had been expecting the soft knock, once it hit the front door. And then the doorbell after that. He'd sat down and waited, keeping quiet enough to hear it.

He put out his cigarette, got up, and walked into the hall.

He didn't expect to have to push against someone's full weight when he opened the door.

'...and how the _fuck_ do you know where I live,' was the first thing Ronnie managed to spit out, despite it being the last thing anyone probably should have said in those circumstances.

'Just let me in, you bastard,' Morse slurred against the wood of his door frame, eyes wild and dark and staring ahead kind of blindly.

His forehead glistened with blood and sweat, his dark jacket looked wet and dirty, and he carried himself like he'd been kicked around in it a bit more than anyone should have if they were still standing on their own two legs.

Morse looked like absolute shit, like a shagged bag of sticks on stilts, but Ronnie didn't have time to comment on it aloud, because the man retched on his doorstep.

And then he had his arms full of bloody and bruised DS Morse, stumbling and losing consciousness. There was a guy who had no business sticking his nose as deep in other folks' pie as he did. And he did it anyway, all the time.

'Shit,' Ronnie said. His shirt front got dirty from Sergeant Morse's shaky shove, where his hands were stained with flecks of blood and dirt. He moved to shove back, but Morse clung fast onto his arms harder than before.

_'Shit,'_ Ronnie said again, and with proper emotion, too. It was four o'clock in the morning. Who the fuck got themselves into this shape at four o'clock?

He hauled Sergeant Morse back on his feet and yanked him in. Morse let out a sound that should have belonged to a goose under a grater. Or a horse being put down with a very poor misfired shot.

'Sit down,' Ronnie said. Not that Morse seemed to be in any shape to do much else, when just helping him down in a kitchen chair had all of his leg and arm shaking with effort.

Damn everything.

'Where are you bleedin'?' He asked, crouching down to try and meet Morse's eyes. The bloke didn't answer, just screwed his eyes shut and let out a mile-long sigh.

Ronnie squared his jaw. 'Morse, for heaven's sake. You come in here, you'd better start talkin' too. We'll see if you begged for it, but later, okay? Right now I need to know where you're bleedin' from.'

It might have been a nod, what Morse gave, but a sneer was all that came from his mouth for a good while.

'Had a knife. I don't know.'

'Stabbed? Did you pull the damned knife out, you-'

'No, no no. Laceration.'

'Bloody _laceration_ with you- yeah, I get that,' Ronnie snapped. 'Where?' One slash was clearly struck along his temple, hairline matted with darker rust and red than it should have been, but it wasn't dripping or oozing, and it wasn't deep.

He tried to grab a hold of Morse's face to get a look, but the man got loud and flinched away with a yelp. Ronnie lifted his hands up. Morse started blinking, and his glassy eyes turned away from his shoulder and focused on some other, invisible thing two feet to the right.

'Fuck. I've got to call Fred. I'm callin' Fred,' Ronnie said and turned, and stopped. It would have been fine, except that he _couldn't_ call Fred, could he? Not after their last talk. This wasn't work - this was midnight, on his doorstep, with a delirious and well beaten-up Morse, and he was the superior inspector, and the one neck-deep in the mess.

He'd get the blame. Hell, Morse would probably blame him, too, after coming to.

'Shit!' he cursed again, slammed his hand against the kitchen counter, and rushed to look for disinfectant.

'Morse? I'm callin' the hospital, but you've got to let me clean your face.' He dug through the first-aid kit, plaster and scissors ready. He wasn't about to let another one of Fred Thursday's bleed out on him, because as it was, it all really wasn't worth it.

'Tell me where else they got you. Have you got another wound?' He soaked a ball of cotton in alcohol and pulled up another chair. Morse was shaking, but looked back at him, eyes open again. At least sort of.

'I'm not... I'm-'

'You're a damned _mess_, Morse. I need to know.' He reached out to pull Morse's hair out of the way and steady his head. Blood and dirt and chips of paint - not just a slice with a knife then, but getting his head knocked on something too. Great. That explained how weird he'd got. 'Better start talkin' while I mop this up.'

But Morse didn't. He just squeezed at his own sleeves and stared ahead, and shook his head slowly from side to side as much as he could. Ronnie tried to hold him still, but the man was squirming and breathing in a frighteningly irregular way.

'Morse, you'd better fuckin' listen to me, or I'll see you done away for good.' He grabbed a firm hold of Morse's jacket. It wasn't a jostle, but with how the lad's face paled and froze, it might as well have been.  
Or maybe it was his words; Ronnie should have watched them more closely. His throat was dry and his hands got cold and clammy, however, so he wasn't about to start coddling the sergeant either.

'Say something, Morse, I'm not talkin' to myself here.'

Morse stared ahead for a long minute, eyes blinking an moustache in a twist.

'I'm... bleeding,' he mumbled after a torturous wait.

'Yeah! Am aware!'

'No, I... I'm _bleeding_.'

'Right now?' Ronnie nearly dropped the cotton wad he'd been hitting against the side of Morse's head.

Morse nodded, a tiny, rushed admission.

'Should have said something, then. Where, Morse? Where's the wound?'

'It feels... I'm... My shoulder hurts,' he slurred, voice wet and choked, and then the bastard was finally weeping out those pained tears he'd been holding for fiften minutes.

'You're not serious.'

'It's very warm,' Morse said meekly, like he was just suggesting something a little bothersome. 'Under. Under the...' Ronnie shook his head, not getting what he meant. Morse twitched his left hand a bit, not really moving the arm where it was pressed closer to his body than the right.

'Jesus, you're kidding me.'

If it was a major artery, Ronnie had already lost the game, and would get beaten to pulp by Alan and Fred and both of their friends by the time sun rose up.

'Oh, _fuck_. Right, I'm callin' the ambulance now. Hang on.'

His fingers felt clumsy and shaky on the telephone, even if he knew where to call and what to say. A mantra, by now, in their profession.

_Their_ common line of work, his and Morse's. They had that going for them, despite how tremendously dumb it was that he was stuck with that of all the things rushing through his head. And it wasn't even true - the detective position was a job for him. It was a name for his hobby for Morse.

A hobby that clearly never fucking _stopped_, because _he's bleeding out in my kitchen, right there, I don't know what happened, I want you to come and get him to emergency already, I think he's got himself nicked in an artery under his arm, do something, for God's sake, you're the medical people here!_

The sweet-voiced lady on the other end of the line told him to keep calm. And all the while he could hear Morse's laboured and shaky breaths a few feet away from him.

'Listen, this man works for me, and I ain't got chance to let him die under my watch, all right?' he snapped.

_'I've sent for the ambulance,'_ little Miss Keep-cool-Mister-Box drawled on, like he was being unreasonable. _'Is he still conscious?'_ she asked, and took ages to do so.

Ronnie had already tossed the receiver from his hand and turned back to Fred's sergeant.

'Morse? Morse, are you with me?' he asked, and almost went to shake him before he remembered the shoulder. 'Now's not the time for a kip, you hear me?' Ronnie took a hold of his wrist instead, checking for a pulse. Still there, but weak and too quick. His own was rushing to match, beating in his throat.

Morse got shaky again, drawing in a breath after breath on rapid fire, pressing into the chair as much as he could. He looked honestly frightened, and Ronnie bet he had his reasons - judging by the way his face was twitching and his eyes widened. He was staring ahead with eyes like two black holes.

'Don't touch me,' Morse mouthed without making half a sound. He glanced at Ronnie like he'd seen a ghost, and it had a freezing rush running down his spine.

'Okay.' Ronnie let go. 'Okay. I don't know where you're at, but an ambulance's coming. Hang on.'

He didn't know what to do, he was out of his depth with Morse more than ever before, and wasn't that just the joy of having that bastard around. Before he turned again, Ronnie motioned at Morse with his hands, hoping that he would stay as he was, or at least not get any worse.

_'Mister Box? Are you there?'_ the little hen was still clucking with a disappointed tone, when he picked the telephone up again.

'Yeah, he's hangin' there, but I think he's been drugged.'

_'I'd estimate the ambulance to be there in five minutes. There's not much traffic yet.'_

'Better be,' he snapped. 'I can't have him dyin' here, do you understand!' Inconvenient, wasn't it, that all of the shit in his life was hitting the fan at once.

_'Of course not. Now, sit down, sir, and keep your friend company. Try to keep him awake. Be ready to get the door, sir, and I'm sure the ambulance staff will do their best.'_

The idiocy of the instructions left him dumbstruck, and confused enough to only reply with a yes and a goodbye. Morse keened aloud like a dying cat, behind his shoulder.

Ronnie caught his own wide eyes in the mirror, and really, he'd rather have stared at Morse's dazed and terrified look for the rest of the night.

'It's all right, Morse. They're comin' to get you. You still with your feet on the ground?' he asked.

Morse shook his head with enough force that he choked on his own breath. 'Who?' he slurred. 'Who's coming? No. No, no. _No._'

'The bloody _ambulance_, Morse,' Ronnie said, but he couldn't quite get the sharp edge right. He didn't like it at all when people wept and shook and died. On his watch. He drew his mouth in a tight, determined line - if only to steel himself and not much for Morse's comfort. 'But I'm guessin' that's a no. If you can't get that into your head. Must be right out of it.'

Morse didn't say a thing, just let out another shrill sound, and held onto the edge of the chair with his good hand.

'There's goin' to be some loud noise and bright lights for you in a minute,' Ronnie said for lack of anything better. 'Thought you might like to know.'

Morse laughed, in a weak and choking and frightened way, but it was probably because of something else, and not him. The sergeant was staring at his kitchen ceiling, after all, and not Ronnie.

Alan was going to kill him. Maybe not right away, but maybe not too far from learning about it all, either.

He didn't say more until he heard the sirens.

'Wake up, Morse, it's your ride.'

Morse just cried 'No,' and held fast onto the edge of the chair.

'Yeah, it is.'

**Author's Note:**

> One of those "I have no idea where this came from" fics, but a really fun one to try out anyway.
> 
> I kind of feel like this could be an interesting kind-of-a-casefic of few chapters, but I would have to come up with a plot for that. For now, this is all I've got, pals. Let me know your thoughts!


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